


Pastoral

by Kittywitch



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Literature, Romance, fan fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 16:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5934801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittywitch/pseuds/Kittywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A drabble of Nyssa and Adric being tooth-rottingly cute. This was originally written in 2012 and I was experimenting, so the prose is a little odd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pastoral

    The picnic had been abandoned by its youngest members, while the others hung about and lazily picked at the the foods they had brought, both too full to keep eating and by that token too full to leave the blanket they had laid out in the sun. The chaperon lay back in the grass, his hat over his eyes and his chest rising and falling with each breath. If he was not truly asleep, he was close enough to not mind the distinction.

    She had a peach in her hands. She held it out towards him, offering it to him and trailing backwards into the woods. The boy followed, his smile trying to decide whether he was nervous or conspiring.

    Out of the clearing, the grass came up to their knees and made his trousers damp. The progress was slow and halting, but without a destination there was no rush. The air was warm that day. It smelled sweet, like of neither a fruit nor a flower but something in between. 

    They exchanged bites of the peach, the sticky juice pouring from their chins. First he bit into it, touching the plush skin to his lips and breaking it, then he handed it to the girl, who took it in both her hands and expanded the hole he had made. Their hands overlapped for a moment, but he pulled back and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand.

    As they  lay in the grass together, she wondered if his mouth was sweet from the flesh of the peach, what it would be like to taste it. He handed the fruit to her, and she touched it to her mouth, but did not bite. The juice ran into her mouth and she sucked thoughtfully at the hole their teeth had made. She contemplated the soft, warm flesh against her lips, closing her eyes. 

    He watched her, lying back among the flowers with her hair spread around her. Thoughts of touching it beat against his chest for a moment, but he turned them aside. Not today. Not now. He just wanted to watch her for a moment longer.

    The boy tried braiding the flowers together, but he had no practice at it. She took the thin, uneven strand from him and worked more flowers into it as he plucked more from the grass around them. After a time, he took the chain back and lashed the ends together, making a crown he set up on her head.

    They rose, chasing each other through the flowers and deeper into the forest, catching one another around the waist and almost tripping, stumbling and hiding behind trees just to leap out at one another.  
    The pair walked further into the woods, laughing quietly and talking to each other, though neither could precisely describe what it was they were talking about. 

    Presently, they came upon a clearing in the woods. A swing had been constructed, evidentially about a generation ago, then forgotten in the woods. The tree itself was in full bloom, the few, faint leaves surrounded by tiny flowers. Long tendrils of the plant had crept down the swing, winding around the ropes and covering it in pale pink blossoms.  
      
    The pair tested the swing experimentally, first the girl and then the boy. She sat on the worn wood, wondering when it had been constructed and by whom. Why had they done so? Lacking answers, he joined in her questions. How large was the tree then? Who had they made the swing for? Did they help? Did they carve their initials somewhere in these woods? Why was this beautiful place abandoned? He held the rope and watched her feet trail the ground, cutting a path in the fallen blossoms.

    He smiled and circled behind her, announcing there was really only one way to test the construction's integrity; then pushed the swing and its rider away. The girl gasped and giggled, afraid for a moment the whole apparatus would fall to pieces with her on it, but then the branch bearing her weight shook just enough to send a shower of the pink blossoms down upon them. The young squeals became that of delight, and he laughed with her, drawing her back and pushing again, and again, then leaping up behind her and riding, standing with his knees against her back. She kicked out and up, he bent back and forward, and with each swing they rose higher, more of the petals dropping onto them. 

    Presently, he dismounted and held onto the rope, dragging back on the swing's momentum. The laughter quieted and the rhythm slowed, she turned her face to him only to discover he'd been staring at her for quite some time.  
    She thought of the peach and of lying in the grass with their hands almost touching. Now, they could. She could slip her hands a few inches up the rope, past the soft flowers and brush the tips of her fingers against his.

    She was beautiful, he thought, with the sunlight coming through the branches and all those pale pink blossoms caught in her hair. Of course, she looked just the way she always had. But that was beautiful, and now she just seemed to fit in the world better. She was moving her hand up the rope, over his. He couldn't describe it, how having her hand around his made him feel both terrified and secure. It was like catching a firefly in his hands. The simple joy of having succeeded was tempered with the fear of crushing it in his hands, doing something horribly wrong and not being able to recover from his mistake. And yet this very excitement felt so pure and calming.

    It would be so easy, he thought, to kiss her.

    The hand that wasn't under hers came off the rope and made a slow, cautious path to her hair. He brushed a few petals away, trying to buy time so he could look at her eyes and not her lips. If only he couldn't feel his ears flushing, perhaps he might be able to focus on her. He discovered that he had been holding his breath since before he touched her hair. 

    He looked so nervous.  She began to fear he wouldn't try to. That nervousness made him all the sweeter, though. He was precisely a cute adolescent boy, there was no other word for it, and that cute face wore trepidation well.  Part of her wanted to just take his face in her hands and settle the matter quickly, let it be done and end this lingering moment of uncertainty. But how could she do that? How could she possibly decide for someone as they worked towards that conclusion and gathered their courage for the first time.  
    And she was nervous, too.

    Now he was coming forward. Now he was closing his eyes. Now they were going to kiss. If he wasn't scared, she wouldn't be either. She closed her eyes and inhaled as she moved her own head towards him. This was it. This was the first kiss. Not just hers, or his, or the first time they kissed each other, but the quintessential, heart-stopping moment of all young lovers in the universe taking that tentative step towards each other. This was what they would compare it to. This clearing in the woods, this sunlight and flowers.

 

    At that precise moment, a cricket ball came flying past their heads and the two companions sprang apart as if from an electric shock.  
    "Sorry about that, are you quite alright?" the Doctor asked, coming into view. He gestured awkwardly with his bat. "I overshot a bit, I was afraid I might have hit you."  
    Adric, now firmly on the opposite side of the clearing, nodded rapidly. It was Nyssa who actually answered the question.  
    "Oh, we're fine. We're fine."  
    "Lovely." the Doctor smiled, retrieving the ball. He grinned at his young friends. "Come along and joins us then. Two on two, that's better odds, isn't it?"

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written in 2012, and I feel my writing has improved somewhat, but it's still a cute drabble. The following are my comments from 2012:  
> I hate naming things... seriously, this is named "Pastoral" because I would, in order to defend my honor, need to slam my face in a desk if I named it "Teenage Dream", which was the song that inspired this. The Glee version, actually, so that's why I wound up drawing Adric in a Warblers uniform. 
> 
> Oddly enough, because of the ambiguous way I wrote it, this story could work in either the traditional universe or the "Society of Academics" steampunk universe. And I really must tell you, writing Nyssa/Adric is a really nice change from writing Six/Peri. "You're so cute I don't feel as smart as usual." versus "Do you find insanity and arrogance sexy?"


End file.
